Max Liebermann
Max Liebermann was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. In addition to his activity as an artist, he also assembled an important collection of French Impressionist works.
The son of a Jewish banker, Liebermann studied art in Weimar, Paris, and the Netherlands. After living and working for some time in Munich, he returned to Berlin in 1884, where he remained for the rest of his life. He later chose scenes of the bourgeoisie, as well as aspects of his garden near Lake Wannsee, as motifs for his paintings. Noted for his portraits, he did more than 200 commissioned ones over the years, including of Albert Einstein and Paul von Hindenburg.
Liebermann was honored on his 50th birthday with a solo exhibition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, and the following year he was elected to the academy. From 1899 to 1911 he led the premier avant-garde formation in Germany, the Berlin Secession. Beginning in 1920 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. On his 80th birthday, in 1927, Liebermann was celebrated with a large exhibition, declared an honorary citizen of Berlin and hailed in a cover story in Berlin's leading illustrated magazine. But such public accolades were short-lived. In 1933 he resigned when the academy decided to no longer exhibit works by Jewish artists, before he would have been forced to do so under laws restricting the rights of Jews. His art collection, which his wife inherited after his death, was looted by the Nazis after her death in 1943.
In his various capacities as a leader in the artistic community, Liebermann spoke out often for the separation of art and politics. In the words of arts reporter and critic, Grace Glueck, he "pushed for the right of artists to do their own thing, unconcerned with politics or ideology." His interest in French Realism was offputting to conservatives, for whom such openness suggested what they thought of as Jewish cosmopolitanism.
Biography
Youth
Max Liebermann was a son of a wealthy Jewish fabric manufacturer turned banker, Louis Liebermann, and his wife Philippine. His grandfather, a textile entrepreneur who founded Liebermann's significant fortune, was also the grandfather of Emil Rathenau, Carl Liebermann and Willy Liebermann von Wahlendorf. Only three days after Max's birth, the came into force, which granted the Jews in Prussia greater rights. He had five siblings, including the older brother, who later became an entrepreneur, and the younger brother, the historian Felix Liebermann.In 1851 the Liebermanns moved to Behrenstraße, from where Max attended a nearby humanistic toddler school. Soon he hated this, as he did every later educational institution.
After primary school, Liebermann switched to the Dorotheenstädtische Realschule. He passed the time more and more by drawing, which his parents cautiously encouraged. When Max was ten years old, his father Louis bought the imposing Palais Liebermann, at Pariser Platz 7, directly to the north of the Brandenburg Gate. The family attended church services in the reform community and increasingly turned away from the more orthodox way of life of their grandfather. Although the Liebermanns' house had large salons and numerous bedrooms, the parents encouraged their three sons to sleep in a common room. This was also provided with a glass window in the wall so that the schoolwork could be supervised from outside.
When Louis Liebermann commissioned his wife to paint an oil painting in 1859, Max Liebermann accompanied his mother to the painter. Out of boredom, he asked for a pen and began to draw. Even as an old woman, Antonie Volkmar was proud to have discovered Liebermann. His parents were not enthusiastic about painting, but at least in this case their son did not refuse to attend schools. On his afternoons off school, Max received private painting lessons from Eduard Holbein and Carl Steffeck.
In the family, Max was not considered particularly intelligent. At school, his mind often wandered, and he gave inappropriate answers to questions his teachers asked him. This resulted in teasing from classmates which became unbearable for him, so that he took refuge several times in supposed illnesses. His parents showed him affection and support, but he was aware of their greater regard for his older, more "sensible" brother Georg. Max's talent for drawing did not mean much to his parents: When his works were first published, the father forbade the 13-year-old from signing the name Liebermann on them.
As a secondary school, Louis Liebermann chose the Friedrichwerdersche Gymnasium for his sons, where the sons of Bismarck had studied. In 1862, 15-year-old Max attended an event by the young socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, whose passionate ideas fascinated the millionaire's son. In 1866 Max Liebermann graduated from high school. He later claimed to have been a bad student and had difficulty with getting through the exams: in truth, he was not one of the better students in mathematics, but his participation in the higher grades was considered "decent and well-mannered". In the Abitur exams he came fourth in his class, but in his family Max always felt like a "bad student".
Student life and early works
After graduating from high school, Liebermann enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. He chose chemistry, in which his cousin Carl Liebermann had also been successful. The chemistry course served as a pretext to be able to devote himself to art. Instead of attending the lectures, he rode out in the zoo and painted. At Carl Steffeck, he was also and allowed to perform assistant tasks more and more frequently in the design of monumental battle pictures. There he met Wilhelm Bode, who later became Liebermann's sponsor and director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Berlin, which exmatriculated Liebermann on 22 January 1868 because of "study failure". After an intense conflict with his father, who was not impressed by his son's path, In 1869 his parents made it possible for him to study painting and drawing at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar. There he became a student of the Belgian history painter Ferdinand Pauwels, who fostered in him an appreciation of the work of Rembrandt during a visit to the class at the Fridericianum in Kassel. Rembrandt had a lasting influence on the style of the young Liebermann.In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 he was briefly gripped by the general patriotic frenzy. He volunteered for the Johannitern because a badly healed broken arm prevented him from regular military service, and served as a medic during the siege of Metz. In 1870/1871 a total of 12,000 Jews went to war on the German side. The experiences on the battlefields shocked the young artist, whose enthusiasm for war waned.
From Whitsun 1871, Liebermann stayed in Düsseldorf, where the influence of French art was stronger than in Berlin. There he met Mihály von Munkácsy, whose realistic depiction of women plucking wool, a simple everyday scene, aroused Liebermann's interest. Financed by his brother Georg, he traveled to the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Scheveningen for the first time, where he was inspired by the light, the people and the landscape.
His first large painting, Die Gänserupferinnen, was made in the months after his return. Painted in dark tones, it shows the prosaic activity of goose plucking. In addition to Munkászy's naturalism, Liebermann also incorporated elements of history painting into it. At the sight of the still unfinished painting his teacher Pauwels dismissed him: he could not teach him anything more. When Liebermann took part in the Hamburg art exhibition with the picture in 1872, his unusual subject aroused disgust and shock. Although the critics praised his skillful painting style, he was criticized as a "painter of the ugly". When the painting was exhibited in Berlin that same year, it met with similar opinions, but a buyer was found in the railway magnate Bethel Henry Strousberg. Liebermann had found his first style: realistic and unsentimental depiction of working people, without condescending pity or romanticism.
In 1873 Liebermann saw farmers harvesting beets at the gates of Weimar. He decided to capture this motif in oil, but when Karl Gussow cynically advised him not to paint the picture, Liebermann scratched it from the canvas. He felt powerless and without drive. Liebermann decided to visit the famous history and salon painter Hans Makart in Vienna, where he stayed for only two days. Instead, he was determined to turn his back on Germany and its art scene, which Liebermann regarded at the time as backward and outdated.
Paris, Barbizon and Amsterdam
In December 1873 Liebermann moved to Paris and set up a studio in Montmartre. In the world capital of art, he wanted to make contacts with leading realists and impressionists. But the French painters refused to have any contact with the German Liebermann. In 1874 he submitted his goose plucking to the Salon de Paris, where the picture was accepted but received negative reviews in the press, especially from a nationalist point of view. Liebermann first spent the summer of 1874 in Barbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau. "Munkácsy attracted me a lot, but Troyon, Daubigny, Corot and above all Millet did even more."The landscape painting en plein air practiced by painters of the Barbizon School was of great importance for the development of Impressionism. Liebermann turned away from the old-fashioned, heavy painting of Munkácsy, more interested in the methods of the Barbizon School than in the motives that influenced them: In Barbizon, for example, he remembered the Weimar study Arbeiter im Rübenfeld, looked for a similar motif and created the Potato Harvest in Barbizon, which he did not complete until years later. Ultimately, he tried to follow in Millet's footsteps and, in the opinion of contemporary critics, lagged behind him with his own achievements: The depiction of the workers in their environment seemed unnatural; it seemed as if they were added to the landscape at a later date.
In 1875 Liebermann spent three months in Zandvoort in Holland. In Haarlem he developed a brighter and more spontaneous style by copying paintings by Frans Hals. It became Liebermann's habit to allow much time to pass between the idea and the execution of larger paintings. It was only when he returned to Paris in the autumn of 1875 and moved into a larger studio that he took up what he had seen and created his first painting of bathing fishermen's boys, a subject he would revisit years later.
In the summer of 1876 there was another stay of several months in the Netherlands, where he continued his studies. In Amsterdam he met the etcher William Unger, who brought him into contact with Jozef Israëls and the Hague School. In his picture, Dutch Sewing School, Liebermann already uses the effect of light in an impressionistic way. He got to know the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam through Professor August Allebé, which led him to a painterly analysis of his Jewish origins. The first studies of the Amsterdam orphanage were also made.
Under the pressure of being accountable to his parents and himself, Liebermann fell into deep depression in Paris, and was often close to despair. During this time only a few pictures were made, and his participation in the Paris Salon did not bring him the desired success. The art scene in the metropolis could not give Liebermann anything; it had even rejected him as an artist on chauvinistic reasons. His paintings had not become "French". In contrast, his regular stays in Holland were more influential. Liebermann made the final decision to leave Paris.